After some conversations over Xmas I have found out more about my Great Grandfather. He was not a teacher at CH but a lab assistant working with kirby. He was called Lawrence not Sutherland and was there from about the late 30's to 1960 or 61 when he retired. I have a photo of him in the new science block with some pupils which I will scan.

He was a very short man (4'11''') and was also a muscian (dance band) his background was head of music for the apprentice bands at an engineering firm in Rugby

need to find power lead for scanner or it will be a camera phone photo of the one photo i have (the rest have been given to the school museum along with several bits of memorabilia).

It has him with about 8 or 9 older boys so I am guessing the science grecians that year along with a master - My father thinks it was taken just before he retired so maybe in 1960 - the other CH photo I have from him is for some reason a close up of the lead water tank in front of the New Science block although i remember another photo i saw some years back with it in the Science cloister - was it moved at some point ?

The notion of Kirby working with a lab assistant is mind-boggling. I'm sure he got on with them very well, but for all his very great virtues as a teacher, Kirby was one of the messiest people, and certainly the messiest science teacher, I have ever met. I don't think an assistant would have touched his lab with a bargepole, and I think that's how Kirby wanted it.

I do remember a very small lab assistant. And there was a woman, called Mrs Constable I think.

But I look forward to this picture, as I probably know the people in it.

About 1954 or 1955. Vague recollections of the cinder track that led from the mile across towards the Bax Castle where a lab technician lived who had a windmill in his front garden to generate electricity. But all so vague that I would have to check maps etc if there is any interest.

that could well be him - his house was the end one in new road, southwater which where the footpath opposite the end of the cindertrack comes out http://goo.gl/maps/AbLjf it has been replaced with a big shiny house now but was a little bungalow